My name is Na Li and I come from China but have been living in Oxford for more than 15 years. I completed my master’s degree in plant molecular genetics in Professor Dabing Zhang group in Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. My research focused on the genetic analysis of rice male sterility related genes and the work had been published on “The Plant Cell”. I then moved to Oxford in 2007 and worked with Professor Hugh Dickinson in the Department of Plant Sciences for a BBSRC Crop Science Initiative project. The aim of the project was to identify maize sequences that are likely involved in the regulation of grain shape and size. The publication for this work can be found here. After leaving Plant Sciences in 2009, I joined Syngenta Jealott’s Hill International Research Centre for a project related to the pathogenicity of Septoria tritici under the supervision from Dr Mikael Courbot.
In 2016, I joined the Jarvis group in the Department of Plant Sciences as a research technician and worked on the project aiming to identify the new regulator of chloroplast protein import in Arabidopsis. In 2018, I was awarded an opportunity to study DPhil in Jarvis group which was generously funded by BBSRC Interdisciplinary Bioscience DTP programme. My PhD topic focuses on the genetic and molecular characterisation of the regulation of chloroplast protein import in Arabidopsis. I utilised molecular biology, genetics, and biochemistry methods to characterise the gene which plays a crucial role during chloroplast biogenesis. This work had been published on “Nature Plants”. From 2023, I started to work as a postdoctoral research associate in Jarvis group and my project is about the regulation of chloroplast protein import and plant immunity.
